Don Cossacks

The Don Cossacks are cossacks who settled along the Don River of southern Russia. The Don Cossack Host often provided several thousand soldiers for the Imperial Russian Army, fighting in almost every Russian war; a third of total cossack manpower available for military service came from the Don Cossacks. The cossacks were persecuted by the Bolsheviks after the Russian Revolution, as their lands were seized due to their immense agricultural value. Many cossacks were treated as kulaks and were harassed; half of Don Cossacks were killed or deported between 1917 and 1941. Some fought with Nazi Germany during World War II as the XV SS Cossack Cavalry Corps, and the survivors of the unit were either executed or sent to gulags. In the 1990s, following the fall of the Soviet Union, the Don Cossack Host was reorganized, and 200,000-2,000,000 Don Cossacks live in Russia today.